Variation
by nightwalker3
Summary: [In Progress] The Reikai Tantei can handle any enemy, no matter how strong. But an intelligent enemy may be something else altogether...
1. Opening Gambit

**Warnings:** This chapter contains minor language and implied character death.

**Disclaimer:** _Yu Yu Hakusho_ is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

* * *

**Variation**  
Prologue: Opening Gambit

"We cannot resist the fascination of sacrifice."  
(Rudolf Spielman)

* * *

_Wednesday afternoon, 3:18 pm_

Kuwabara was on his way to his last class of the day – English 302, Conversation and Culture, which was a little misleading, Kuwabara always thought, since it seemed to mostly involve American conversation and culture – when Hiei died.

It felt a little like a hand closing around his throat and squeezing, only it didn't feel anything like that at all. The sun was shining, the bell was ringing, students were walking past him laughing and talking and worrying about their last pop quiz, and somewhere in the Makai, Hiei had just died.

Breathing would have been hard, if he'd thought to try it, but he didn't. For several seconds that stretched on for years, Kuwabara was only aware of the fact that something which had been there before no longer was. It was a shock not unlike looking down and realizing one of your arms had just been cut off.

_The little shit finally got his ass kicked_, he thought vaguely, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. His vision was tunneling, going black around the edges, leaving the world a blurry, periscoped version of itself.

It hurt like a fucker, too. A seeping pain that slid inside his mind, dripping through his thoughts and pooling around nerve endings, staining memories and coloring his perceptions.

_Sensui_, he thought distractedly. But that had been worse.

Self-preservation kicked in and his mind reacted on instinct, shutting down his psychic awareness, throwing up the mental shields Genkai had spent long hours teaching him to create until he no longer had to tear them down and rebuild them with every use, but could simply ease them aside until needed. Nothing was supposed to get through them, but this had, so violently and suddenly he hadn't felt it coming. Maybe because it wasn't an attack. Maybe because Hiei had been inside those shields before, and knew the way.

_Hiei_ was _dead_.

Kuwabara dragged air in through gritted teeth and forced oxygen into his lungs. The way they burned told him he'd been lost to the shock longer than he would have liked.

Hiei was dead, because someone had killed him.

The world snapped back into focus around him, still the same day. No one else had noticed or cared what had happened.

Hiei had been murdered, and something smoky and thick had curled through Kuwabara's mind like a drugged animal, or the dying embers of a forest fire, just long enough to warn him that he was next.

* * *


	2. The Isolated Pawn

**Warnings:** This chapter contains minor language and implied character death. 

**Disclaimer:** _Yu Yu Hakusho_ is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

* * *

**Variation **  
Part One: The Isolated Pawn 

"The Pawns are the soul of the game."  
(Francois Andre Danican Philidor)

* * *

_Wednesday evening, 9:42 pm_

"Human, I can _smell _you." The demon was crouched on all fours on top of parked car, streetlights reflecting off a thick black carapace, and glistening antennae. Drooping black wings draped over the sides of the car, fluttering slightly as the demon braced itself to leap at any sight of its prey. It was unattractive as far as demons went, which was to say that it would have sent Lovecraft screaming into the night.

Kuwabara supposed he was lucky that so far no other humans had wandered across the scene, although he wouldn't have minded a distraction right about then. A little hysterical screaming might have been just what he needed to cover his attack. Unfortunately, as things stood it didn't look like anyone was going to wander across them any time soon, and the creepy bug-thing had him cornered.

The car rocked slightly above him as the bug-thing shifted its weight and Kuwabara winced as the muffler cut into his leg. The demon's weight had already pushed the car low enough to press him into the pavement, turning a bad hiding place into a dangerous one. Kuwabara rolled his eyes and bit back a sigh. He bet Kurama never got himself into these situations.

But then Kurama had gotten himself captured by bug-thing's boss, so Kuwabara was probably doing all right just to still be free. Even if he was hiding under a parked car.

Bug-thing inhaled sharply, a wet sucking sound that made Kuwabara want to twitch. "Human, I can taste you. I will find you. I will drink the blood from your veins and suck the marrow from your bones, and before you die I will warm my hands against your beating heart as it steams in the night air." The wings slapped against the side of the car as the bug-thing laughed. "Kingman doesn't need you alive. Kingman gave you to me. Perhaps I will plant my eggs in your chest and let them feed off your corpse as they hatch."

_Oh, now we're just getting gross._ Kuwabara risked moving enough to worm a hand between his chest and the underside of the car, flattening his palm against the metal. He could hear bug-thing shift its weight, tried to judge where exactly the demon was sitting atop the car. _Oh, the hell with it._

The reiken flared into existence above his palm, smashing through the bottom of the car and piercing through metal and upholstery. Bug-thing shrieked in what Kuwabara fervently hoped was pain, then he shoved, and the car went flying.

_Man, someone's gonna be pissed when they see **that**_

As soon as the car moved, Kuwabara threw himself to the side, rolling across the pavement and pushing himself up into a crouch. He held the reiken with both hands as he searched the wreckage of the car several meters away, looking for any hint of movement.

_It had **wings**_**…**

He threw both hands over his head, the reiken cutting into leathery wings when the bug-thing dropped on top of him. Claws slammed into the pavement on either side of his head as the demon screamed in his face, bright purple blood slicking Kuwabara's hands as the wings shredded and tore. He jerked the reiken to the side, cutting through membrane and into the bug-thing's torso, slicing through its chest before it screeched again and threw itself away from him. Kuwabara wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing violet blood across his thighs as he approached the flailing demon.

Blood was pooling around it on the pavement in a slowly spreading circle, and while its wings flapped spastically against the pavement, one little more than a ragged collection of scraps, the demon didn't seem capable of moving.

Kuwabara approached it warily, nonetheless. Black eyes glared at him and the demon growled low in its throat. "I thought you were going to drink my blood," Kuwabara taunted.

Bug-thing gurgled and kicked at him, but Kuwabara dodged. "Who is Kingman?" he asked urgently. "Why did he send you after me?"

A raspy sound wormed its way out of bug-thing's throat, growing louder and harsher until the creature was convulsing with the force of it. Laughter, Kuwabara realized. The damn thing was laughing at him.

"Kingman will send another," bug-thing said.

"Who is he?" Kuwabara demanded. He slammed the reiken into the street inches from the demon's face, making the creature flinch. "Tell me who this Kingman thinks he is!"

The demon chuckled, blood coating his lips and tongue. "Kingman thinks he is the one who killed your friends, human." A shadow flickered across bug-thing's reflective carapace, and Kuwabara barely had time to dodge, throwing himself across the demon's body, before a demon the size of a Volkswagen slammed to the ground where he'd been standing a second earlier, cracking the pavement and shaking the ground beneath his feet. "Kingman thinks he is the one who will rule Makai without interference!"

Kuwabara studied the newcomer, decidedly unimpressed. Big, yeah, a hulking wolf-type with about six arms – though they were scattered all over, so it was hard to tell for certain at a glance – and an impressive set of horns that looked like something an elk or caribou would have. Huge muscles flexed across its chest and abdomen as it breathed heavily, drooling slightly as it leered at Kuwabara.

"That's gross," Kuwabara told it, grimacing slightly as spittle dripped onto the street.

Big, yes. Powerful, no. If Kuwabara was any judge of youki, drool-monster was only slightly stronger than bug-thing had been. Kuwabara was beginning to feel that Kingman thought he was a pushover or something.

"Let me guess," Kuwabara said. "You're going to drink my blood and suck the marrow from my bones?"

Drool-monster bared its teeth in a grin. "Human _pretty_," it rumbled.

Well, that wasn't expected. Kuwabara blinked at it, feeling slightly dirty. "_Ew_," he grimaced, resisting the urge to squirm. "That's just wrong."

Between them, bug-thing twitched and fell still, youki fading to nothing. Drool-monster didn't seem to care, lifting one leg and slamming a foot the size of a trash-can lid down onto the demon's corpse.

"Are _you_ going to tell me who Kingman is?" Kuwabara asked.

Drool-monster threw its head back and roared, arms spread out, hand held up to the sky.

"No, huh?" Kuwabara slammed both hands against the pavement and channeled his reiki through the stone. Beneath drool-monster's feet, the reiken burst forth and speared the demon, slicing into its groin and bursting out of its neck. "Fucking demons. Always making this so _difficult_." He glared as the huge demon toppled over without so much as a twitch.

He made a face at the corpses littering the street and at the ruined car, and wondered how he was going to explain this away. Now, he decided, would be a good time to get out of there before anyone came investigating.

Kuwabara stood, wiping his hands off on his jeans and grimacing at the tacky, drying blood. _Another pair done for_. Demonslaying was hell on clothing. Shizuru would _not_ be amused. _Ah, at least I didn't step in any of it_, he thought, checking his shoes.

Genkai's was just a few blocks away. He could be there in minutes, and if anyone this side of the Makai was likely to know who or what Kingman was, it would be her.

_Kingman thinks he is the one who killed your friends._

Yuusuke and Kurama were not dead. Hours later, Hiei's death was still an aching bruise in the back of his mind – if Kurama and the asshole had died as well, Kuwabara would have known about it. But that didn't mean this Kingman was treating them like honored guests, either.

_Kingman thinks he is the one who killed your friends._

Kingman had a lot to answer for. As soon as Kuwabara knew what questions to ask.

Youki crept in at the edges of Kuwabara's awareness and made his skin crawl. Waves of it, pouring over him from every direction, still some distance away but getting closer.

But first, Kuwabara was going to have to get out of there with his skin intact.

"_Human!_"

The ground cracked beneath his feet, then shattered, dropping him into the sewers. Cold sewage splashed everywhere as chunks of pavement fell around him, and he shuddered as the contaminated water seeped into his sneakers and through his jeans. "I take it back," he sighed, "This, _this_ is gross." So much for sparing his shoes.

"_Human!_" Something crept through the water, eyes blinking owlishly, a tail slapping the surface. "It has been too long since I tasted human flesh."

"Just out of curiosity," Kuwabara asked, summoning the reiken with a casual flick of his wrist. "How many of you are there, anyway?"

The demon smiled, showing pointed teeth. "Enough, human. Enough."

Kuwabara charged, the reiken slicing between those wide eyes like a knife through butter.

The sewer demon died so easily Kuwabara almost felt bad about it, but any regret he may have felt was done in by the stench of human waste that clung to his clothing as he hauled himself back up to street level. A wall of youki surrounded him now, coming closer, and he probed it, trying to get a feel for how many demons Kingman had sent, but they were, low-level and not very intelligent; D-class mostly, barely capable of intelligent speech, and one was a lot like another. On an individual basis, Kuwabara could have killed them all in his sleep. But a wave of them, coming at him one after another… They were going to wear him down with sheer numbers, if nothing else.

Genkai's was no longer an option. He wouldn't lead a horde down on top of her. Well, not while Yukina was there, anyway. Genkai herself probably wouldn't bat an eye.

_Makai_, he thought, readying himself as one of the demons separated itself from the pack. _Kingman is in the Makai. Kurama and Urameshi are in the Makai. That's where I need to go to get some answers._

Not that he knew how to do that, exactly. Always before, when he'd traveled to the demon world, it had been with the help of Koenma or Botan. The only time he'd gone there under his own power was in his desperate pursuit of Sensui – and slicing the dimensional barrier was definitely not an option here. Even if he could find a place where the barrier was visible, he figured he had pushed his good luck far enough already the first time. Koenma hadn't gone into details, but apparently his father had not been happy with the idea of a human walking around with the ability to wander through the three worlds at will.

There was a fire escape attached to the building across the street, and Kuwabara pulled himself up with one easy movement, then braced his feet against the metal railing and jumped to the next landing. At the top he paused, surveying the street, and trying to focus his sixth sense.

There were at least a couple dozen low-class demons out there, and they had to have gotten into the human world somehow. If Kingman was feeding them through a gate, or a portal, then Kuwabara just trace them back to where they'd appeared, and use the portal himself.

_Yeah, bright idea_, he scoffed. _It's not like the hordes of demons are going to get in your way or anything, And no way would this Kingman guy actually bother to guard the gate._ Although, Kingman had originally intended for bug-thing to do him in, so all things considered, the bastard couldn't be _that_ smart.

They were spreading out, trying to surround him, but he could definitely tell where they were coming from. If he could get past them and find whatever they were using to travel back and forth…

Well, he'd be in the Makai with no backup, no idea who the enemy was, and no knowledge of where his friends were being held. And possibly no way back, if Kingman shut the gate down behind him. Not the best plan he'd ever come up with, really.

Kurama was better at that sort of thing. It was pretty much why they kept him around, anyway. Well, that and his ability to defuse Hiei's temper in 2.4 seconds flat.

Hiei was dead.

The street beneath him was a wreck; the overturned car and its shattered windows, the gaping hole in the streets, the two demon corpses – three if you bothered to glance into the sewers, but hopefully the rats would take care of that. Silhouettes were starting to appear in windows as people finally got up the nerve to see what the noise was now that it had ended. Someone would call the cops and in a couple minutes this would be a very awkward place to be found covered in purple blood and sewage.

The still-expanding wall of youki was nearly a circle now, as the demons spread out to surround him. He wasn't worried about being penned in, but he'd rather do it somewhere there were smaller odds of civilians getting caught in the crossfire.

He needed a plan. Something better than storming his way into the Makai with no backup. That… wasn't even a plan, really. That was suicide.

Somewhere to the east, two youkai broke off from the pack and headed straight for him.

First things first. New battleground. Sarayashiki was just a few blocks away, and it should be deserted at this hour of the night. Something about the idea of demonslaying on his old turf appealed to him.

He called the reiken to hand, lengthening it into a spear, then took a running jump off the edge of the building. The reiken hit the edge and he used it to vault himself across the street, onto the roof of the dry cleaner's across the way. Two more jumps brought him to the edge of the block, where he paused to make sure they were following.

_Not like I'm exactly hiding my ki, or anything._ Not like the stink of sewage wasn't more or less ground into his skin or anything, either. He grimaced and kicked his foot slightly, wincing at the sloshing sound of water still in his shoes. Well, the demons would be able to follow him by smell, if nothing else. _Ah, the romantic and adventurous life of Kuwabara Kazuma. If I ever write my memoirs they'll have to go in the horror section. Or humor. Probably humor._

The demons were keeping pace with him as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop, not gaining but not falling behind, either. Sarayashiki schoolyard was just ahead, dark and unlit except for the outdoor lights, and no trace of human thought patterns anywhere. Perfect.

_Youki_!

He caught a whiff of sulfur and a malicious anticipation pushing at his thoughts, then one of the two closest to him attacked, darting forward at three times the speed it had previously been moving.

Kuwabara waited, tracing the youki until it was nearly on top of him, then threw up a kekkai. The barrier flared briefly just before him, and the demon slammed into it with enough force to flatten itself. Purple blood dripped out of a broken nose as the demon slowly slid to its knees and toppled over.

"Surprise!" Kuwabara spun a roundhouse kick at the kneeling demon's head, grunting as he felt bone crush beneath his heel. The demon fell over with a groan and didn't move.

_Yeah, I'm real impressed. If I ever see this Kingman in person we're gonna have a talk about underestimating your opponents._

The second one howled like an angry dog and attacked from the side. In the streetlights, Kuwabara could see floppy dog-ears and a snout on an otherwise humanoid demon. It snarled, teeth bared, and went for his throat. Kuwabara met the attack with a right hook, extended the reiken as his fist met flesh, and stabbed the demon through the jaw. It gurgled at him as it died and he let its body slide off the reiken.

He could feel tension building in the other demons. They'd been sent to slaughter one lousy human, and now it looked like they were the ones who might end up being slaughtered. Kuwabara smirked. There was nothing he liked more than failing to live down to people's expectations.

The closer they got, the easier they were to pick apart. He figured nearly two dozen were coming for him this time. He gripped the reiken in both hands, and readied himself. He could handle fifteen or twenty lousy D- and C-class demons as long as he kept his head.

Then the sky opened up, and the demons descended.

The first one fell for the same trick, flattening itself against a kekkai. The next didn't dodge the reiken, and suddenly found out how hard it was to fight with no legs. The third, a humanoid demon with a snake tongue and silver eyes, got in the first hit, ducking low while Kuwabara fought off an attack from above, and landing a blow on his kidneys. He staggered slightly, but recovered long enough to kick it in the head. That, actually turned out to be a bad idea. The demon's snake-tongue wrapped around his leg and pulled him off-balance.

"_Shit_." He hit the ground, braced on one knee, and just barely parried an attack from something that looked an awful lot like Puusuke had back in its stuffed animal days. He caught a grey-skinned demon by the throat and squeezed while using the reiken to slice through the snake-demon's tongue. It shrieked in pain, the severed whip of its tongue flapping and spilling blood down the front of its shirt as it writhed. Kuwabara used his grip on the grey demon's throat to pull himself upright, and kicked the snake demon into a wall.

Something struck his back, knocking him back to the ground, the grey demon trapped beneath him, and claws dug into his shoulder for an instant before they tore away. Kuwabara swore and twisted the grey demon's neck until it snapped, then rolled to his feet in time to meet an attack from a feathered demon with grasping talons and a hooked beak. The bird-creature didn't put up much of a fight after he sliced on of its wings off, and when he threw it into a tree, it didn't get up again.

He spun to meet the next attack, but there wasn't one.

The schoolyard was littered with bodies of fallen demons, nearly two dozen of them, some still twitching. Kuwabara did a quick mental tally and figured he'd been responsible for seven of them. Maybe eight.

"All right," he called, planting his feet firmly and letting the reiken flare brightly. "Show yourself."

Something dark and fast and much, much more powerful than a D-class demon leapt at him.

* * *

end _Isolated Pawn_


	3. Exchange Sacrifice

**Disclaimer: **As always, _Yu Yu Hakusho_ is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shonen Jump, Funimation, and all sorts of other people who aren't me. Sadness.

* * *

**_Variation  
Part Two: Exchange Sacrifice_**

"To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game"  
(Savielly Tartakover)

* * *

_Wednesday afternoon, 3:09pm _

_Stupid!_

Hiei rolled on impact, putting his shoulder underneath him and rolling onto his side, onto his feet, get his legs underneath him and _move, fast before they get another chance-_

Impact against his left side, just beneath the collar bone, and poison pumped into his blood before he could tear the blasted thing away.

_Damnit. That makes twice_.

He crushed the hollow glass dart to powder in his hands and tried to make his body work for him. The first shot had taken him by surprise, and even though whatever this poison was worked fast, he never should have allowed the second.

His arms and legs felt leaden, even his own weight was a burden difficult to bear. Hiei was still faster than they were, they still couldn't catch him, but he was operating at a fraction of his usual speed and reflexes.

_I should have known_, he thought grimly as his vision started to go fuzzy, blurring the three demons approaching him, and a chiming sound began to ring in his ears, _that this was a setup_.

Clandestine messages from Kurama were not uncommon. On the contrary, the stupid youko seemed to get a perverse pleasure out of seeing how many different ways he could find to sneak and smuggle messages to him. Hiei thought it was a juvenile waste of time. After all, Mukuro didn't _care_ who he communicated with as long as it didn't violate her interests, or compromise his loyalty. He'd tried pointing that out. It hadn't done much good.

Most of the messages found their way to him via plants: creeper vines growing through cracks in the ceiling and dropping letters on his head while he rested, trees that twitched their branches at him and groaned irritably until he reached inside a concealed knothole and pulled out whatever message Kurama had secreted there. A briar patch that grew into neatly arranged rows of hiragana and kanji.

Mukuro wouldn't have minded the odd correspondence. If she found out that the youko was flexing his powers inside her territory, especially while technically still connected to Yomi's court, and well-known to be amongst Urameshi's supporters…

This message had been brought by demon. A low-level bird-type, with the stink of a carrion-eater about it. That alone should have alerted him. But the rock it had dropped on Hiei's head from the sky had turned out to be a hollow seed the size of Hiei's fist. Cracked in half it had revealed a sheet of parchment and a message from Kurama requesting a meeting.

The seed was saturated with Kurama's youki. The letter was in Kurama's handwriting, the words sounded authentic. Hiei was beginning to wish, in the clarity of hindsight, that he'd insisted a little harder on some sort of prearranged code to authenticate messages.

Hiei allowed himself a moment to wonder what enemies they'd made that could coerce Kurama into baiting an ally into a trap.

It was done. He had to get out of this alive before he'd get any answers. Then he'd kick that stupid fox's head in for getting him into this mess.

The three approaching him were powerful, as far as it went. Lower B-Class, Hiei would judge, and he was being generous toward the third. The woman, though, was… not unimpressive. The youki she put off was as cold and smooth as ice, and something about her made his hackles rise.

_Not powerful, no, but dangerous._

She was the one to be wary of. Hiei held back a snarl as they slowly approached, and gathered his strength for an attack. Curse the bitch and her poisons.

"Little guy doesn't want to go down," one of the males drawled. Ridiculously tall and gangly, with triple-jointed arms and rear-jointed legs, his head swiveled atop a narrow stalk. "Urameshi went down like a ton of bricks when we hit him with this stuff."

Hiei paused, the words coming through a fog as thick as soup to settle in his mind.

"Oh look. We got his attention." The second male was mostly humanoid with pointed ears and four parallel scars across his right cheek.

The female stepped closer, and Hiei dimly realized that the ringing sound was not a result of the poison, but bells tied into her hair. Her eyes were black, as were her lips and fingernails, and when she spoke he could see that her teeth and tongue were the same oily black as her eyes. Her skin was pale white, and black veins crisscrossed her face and arms. Something about that caught his memory, but then flitted away into the fog.

"We have taken Urameshi," she said. She was short, compared to her companions, reaching only the shoulder of the scarred male. "And we have taken Kurama. In a few short moments you will no longer be able to resist the effects of my poison, and then you too will be taken."

"Over my dead body," Hiei snarled, putting enough force into the words to surprise her.

"That could be arranged," she told him in earnest seriousness. "Kingman had hoped to use you as a weapon, but you are not indispensable."

_A weapon against what?_ Hiei narrowed his eyes. "Your poison." The black eyes and teeth and tongue. He raked her body from top to bottom and yes, there, at the chest and the waist – a bulge, where extra appendages were wrapped tightly around herself, hidden by the flowing silk and scarves she draped herself in. "A weaver." _That explains why Kurama-_

"Very good. It only took you a few moments longer than it took Kurama to figure it out." She smirked and tapped a black fingernail against her black lips. "Urameshi didn't have a clue."

_That's unsurprising_.

"If you surrender you'll be kept alive." She stepped closer, her feet crunching on the rocks and dirt.

"My Queen," the scarred male crossed his arms and managed to look bored. "Others approach."

Hiei couldn't sense anything, but he was barely staying on his feet by then, the weaver's poison working against him. He narrowed his eyes and turned his concentration inwards, focusing on his core energy, gathering up his strength before the poison spread completely.

The weaver looked briefly furious, but schooled her expression quickly. "Finish him then." She threw a vicious smirk at Hiei as she turned away. "Hopefully the _human_ will be more sport than this one."

Kuwabara. All four of them were to be targeted. Was this because of reikai tantei business? Because of their brief stint as Team Urameshi during the Dark Tournament? Maybe they'd killed someone these demons – and their _Kingman_ – had cared about.

Well, that could be almost anyone, really.

Was this political? Kurama from Yomi's court, Hiei from Mukuro's, Yuusuke from Raizen's? Why involve Kuwabara then? He'd no connection to the makai. Unless they'd meant another human entirely.

No. The weaver bitch had meant for him to react to her words. The only humans he could be connected to were Genkai and the idiot, but the idea that threatening either one of them was a means of discouraging him was laughable.

Hiei growled low in his throat. First Kurama, now this. The next time Kurama had something flowery and dramatic to say about teamwork Hiei was going to remind him of this situation.

The scarred male approached him warily, passing by the weaver. He was practically radiating wariness as he eyed Hiei – smarter than he looked, then. Under normal circumstances Hiei would have made short work of him, and this one seemed aware of the fact.

"Finish him, Rook." The weaver had a strand of her hair wrapped around her finger and was tapping a bell against her lips.

Hiei filed the name away with the others for reference as Rook gave the weaver an indecipherable look and raised his right hand to chest height, palm down, and curled his fingers.

Then he pulled and a sword slid out of his chest.

Not reiken, or anything so flashy, just a metal sword with a plain hilt. Wards and spells danced over the blade, but the sword itself wasn't mystical in the slightest. The spell to sheathe it inside the chest was a fairly common one in makai, where the ability to carry a concealed weapon past even the most thorough guards was practically a matter of survival. Hiei considered it an amateur's trick, but that didn't mean he hadn't memorized the spell himself decades ago.

Rook raised the sword above his head-

_That's sloppy swordsmanship._

-and struck downwards, slicing the blade through the air and through the space where Hiei had been just a split second ago.

Rook barely had time to realize what had happened before Hiei sank the blade of his katana into Rook's back, severing his spine. The sword dropped from the demon's fingers and he toppled into the dirt at Hiei's feet. The weaver hissed and the gangly demon shifted, preparing to attack himself, but Hiei ignored them, pulling away the warded cloth that bound his jagan. The third eye opened and Hiei could see the approaching youki of a horde of minor demons, still several miles off. He could see the dull aura around the weaver's remaining companion, could see that no shields surrounded the demon's mind whatsoever.

The little strength he'd managed to muster for the attack was fading, but the jagan didn't care. It would feed off Hiei's core energy until he was dead, or until it was warded again and in the meantime it was child's play to reach out and snap the demon's mind with a sharp mental crack.

The weaver glanced sideways as her second companion collapsed in a tangle of long limbs, knees bent and pointing at the sky as his face slumped into the dust. Hiei bared his teeth in a dark grin. Two down, and one or two tricks still left up his sleeves.

The jagan flared but he directed it away from the weaver. Her shields were too tight, too well constructed. Her race tended to develop them early in self-defense from their kin. But there were other ways.

Hellfire blazed down the length of his arm, sucking the last of his strength and leaving him raw. He channeled it at the weaver, taking a moment of grim amusement when her eyes widened in shock just before it struck her dead center.

His knees would no longer support him, but he managed to lower himself to the ground before he could collapse. Wearily he braced his forearms against his knees and concentrated.

_Yuusuke was shielded, too elaborately and too completely to be his own doing. Kurama was a fog of sensation with no coherence, no solidity. The idiot was fucking **oblivious**, but his subconscious was starting to stir, aware of the jaganshi's perusal_.

Hiei felt the bitch slip alongside him, not getting through his shields, but following the link beyond them, tracing the thread of a connection that did, literally, span worlds. A connection that would give her an open door into the idiot's mind.

Breaking a psychic link could be compared to severing your own arm, and it was the last thing Hiei had the strength to do before the poison pulled him under.

* * *

Queen glared at the fire demon sprawled at her feet. She was displeased by his reaction to her poison, annoyed that her attack had not been as successful as she had predicted. At least he had gone down, although Kingman would be… displeased at the loss of Rook and Bishop. 

And now she'd also lost the link to the human. It was a minor inconvenience as she hadn't planned on using Hiei to track down his last ally, but it would have been a delicious irony. Hiei, betrayed by one teammate and betrayer of another. She would have taunted him with the knowledge before she killed him. Foolish, noble types tended to react most pleasingly to that sort of thing.

She sighed and pulled at the charred remnants of her gown, now little more than a collection of blackened scraps. The hellfire attack had been most unexpected, and most unprecedented. If she weren't so annoyed, she would have been impressed at his determination. The poison must surely have started burning his blood by that point, gathering himself enough to attack her must have hurt him badly.

Kingman would certainly have words to say about how she had handled the situation.

She pursed her lips and gazed at Rook and Bishop. Rook was broken, his spine severed, but Bishop's body was untouched. Only his mind had been destroyed.

Queen had not chosen him for his mental abilities, anyway.

She knelt at Bishop's side and pressed the nail of her index finger against the skin of his forehead. The thin, hollow spine that extended through her finger, alongside the bone, broke the surface of her finger and pierced his skin.

A few drops of poison slid into his skin, and she licked his forehead to close the puncture would. Her venom spread through his body quickly with no living will to resist it, and she focused, spreading her webs through his entire body. Under her direction his hands twitched and his eyelids flickered as his head rolled back to stare up at her.

"Wake up, Bishop," she cooed, running her hands through his hair. "Your Queen has some need of you yet."

The body staggered to its feet. Cloudy eyes were aimed at her, but showed no focus, no sign of clear thought. She flexed her control, manipulated it a few steps forward until she was certain she could control the movement of the ridiculous limbs. "You'll have to do, my poor Bishop," she said finally. "Gather the fire demon so we can go tell Kingman we've done his bidding."

Bishop's corpse did not move. Queen spun around and saw only dirt and scrub and Rook's hollow corpse.

"Damn," she said quietly.

* * *

End _Exchange Sacrifice_

to be continued in _The Captured King_

As always, c&c appreciated.


	4. The Captured King

**Warning: **This chapter contains mild language and implied character death.

**Disclaimer:**Not mine, never will, never will be. I weep.

**Notes: **I felt bad for picking on Kuwabara and Hiei for so long, so now I'm sharing the love with Yuusuke and Kurama.

* * *

**_Variation Part Two: The Captured King _**

"Why must I lose to this idiot?"  
(Aron Nimzovich)

* * *

_Wednesday evening, 11:44pm _

"What does it take to eliminate one human? I ask you." Kingman leaned forward, one hand resting against his knee, the other resting on the golden arm of his throne. "Do you think it should take an entire demon horde to eliminate one human, my Knight?"

Knight glanced nervously at the female demon standing at Kingman's left hand before answering. "The human was prepared for them, sire."

Kingman cast Knight a withering glare and sat back on his throne. "Do you hear that, my Queen? The human was prepared for them."

"One does wonder how that could be possible, my lord." The Queen smiled at Knight, but even he wasn't stupid enough to think that was a good sign, and her black lips parted slightly in pleasure at the fear in his eyes. "One does wonder if perhaps a mistake was made."

Knight clenched his fists, but wisely chose not to act further. The Queen stepped forward, her movements delicate and measured as she descended the dais and walked past Knight, the silver bells tied into her hair chiming with every move. She brushed a hand over his arm as she glided past him. "Fear not, my Knight. I would never cast doubt upon _thee_." He tensed beneath her fingers and she smiled genuinely. "No, my lord, I suspect the failure lies closer to home."

Kingman arched an elegant silver brow.

"The fire demon," she said. "I was unprepared for his strength of will. I fear I underestimated him."

"As you did the human," Kingman acknowledged.

She tipped her head to the side. "I apologize for my failure, my lord. I wonder if you will let me make it up to you?" She risked a glance over her shoulder. "I have completed the half-blood's bindings. He will be... contained, if not docile."

"I would like that very much, my Queen."

She nodded. "And, if it pleases you, I will send additional troops after the human. Ones slightly more… prepared."

Kingman narrowed his eyes. "Send the Bishop."

She turned around, the bells ringing loudly with the abrupt movement. "The Bishop – " she caught herself before she could slip. There was no need for him to know that the Bishop was dead yet. "The Bishop would not be my first choice."

"No," Kingman said dismissively. "Your first choice was slain by one miserable human. As were your second, third, fourth – need I continue, my Queen?"

"No," she said. "My lord."

He smiled briefly, a flash of silver in his translucent eyes. "I thought not. Send the Bishop to deal with the human."

She inhaled sharply, tense at the unreadable expression in his eyes.

Kingman smiled. "And bring the half-blood to me. It's time I met the opposition."

* * *

Yuusuke didn't actually remember being captured, which was unfortunate, because that would make it harder to gloss over the details when the guys showed up and asked how he could've been so stupid.

He assumed the guys would be along soon because he didn't remember them being captured and the inherent flaw in that logic was escaping him at the moment.

In any case, the room he was in currently was devoid of any sign of further life, especially angry midget fire-demons, loud idiot humans, or too-fucking-serene foxes, and Yuusuke was nursing the remnants of his headache in a sullen sort of peace.

Being captured always put Yuusuke in a pissy mood.

The room looked like, well, a trophy room. Yuusuke had seen those in the grand Yakuza manors Atsuko had taken him to once or twice when he was still a kid. There they'd been filled with jewelry on display, or sculpture and paintings, sometimes both. Yomi's palace had a trophy room, Yuusuke had seen it once. Filled with the preserved carcasses and hides of what Yuusuke had willfully believed to be makai beasts. The idea that Yomi kept dead demons around nailed to his wall was too creepy for words, even considering that Yomi was pretty damn creepy all by himself.

This place was closer to the Yakuza trophy rooms; a grand, circular area lined by a dozen carved pillars and between each pillar an ornate doorway. The doors were all closed, but light shone beneath a few, and occasionally Yuusuke could hear footsteps (or loud clanging or stomping sounds that could pass for footsteps in the makai) as someone passed by.

Everything in the room was the same shade of bluish-white, like veins running through snow, or something. Marble would have been Yuusuke's best guess if they were in the human word, but in the makai anything was possible. Hell maybe they were veins. That was… really creepy, actually. He was going to stop thinking things like that.

Yuusuke was in the center of the room, suspended in some kind of cage. The bars were invisible but he could feel them when he pushed his hand out more than a foot or two in any direction, and when he sat, he could feel the thin lines of the bars (wires? Threads, almost?) pressing into him. The cage was suspended several feet above the ground, and Yuusuke entertained himself briefly by pretending he could walk on air.

Six glowing spheres, each about the size of a softball, hung in the air in various places around the room. There was no rhyme or reason to their location, but the light they gave off was the only illumination in the entire room, so Yuusuke supposed that was their main purpose.

And then there were the trophies.

Small pedestals made of the same blue-white stone, real fancy and decorative – rich people things, almost gaudy-looking in Yuusuke's opinion – with a sculpted hand that rose out of the tops of each and held whatever treasure was on display there in its palm, curved marble talons curled around each piece like they meant to protect it from theft.

From where he sat, Yuusuke could see a ruby red pendant, a book covered in metal locks, and what looked like a giant eyeball. Yuusuke was pretty sure he'd seen it blink.

Sitting in his cage in the center of all of this, Yuusuke felt quite a lot like the newest trophy in the collection.

The door behind him opened with a groan, and Yuusuke twisted around to look over his shoulder.

The figure in the doorway was backlit by the bright light from the hallway but Yuusuke could still recognize Kurama's youko form.

"Kurama?" He pushed himself up to his knees and turned to face the youko, the thin bars of his cage pressing into his knees through his jeans. "What are you doing here, man?"

_A flash of memory tugged at him. Green vines bursting out of the earth, the feeling that he wanted to run but couldn't…_

The youko paused briefly, then kept walking. There was something off about the way he moved, something less than his usual poise. Kurama tended to stride, even when he was in human form. You never doubted that he knew where he was going. But as he crossed the room he almost… staggered.

"Are you drunk?"

_Feeling sluggish, tired. Something had **bit** him_.

_No. Stung him._

Kurama said nothing as he stood in front of Yuusuke's cage. It was almost as if the youko didn't even see him.

Kneeling brought him almost eye-level with Kurama, and Yuusuke tried to catch something in his friend's gaze. Maybe the cage made him invisible? "Kurama," he said again, louder this time. "Kurama!"

"He cannot hear you, Urameshi-san."

Yuusuke dragged his gaze away from Kurama's vague stare.

"I'm pleased to see you have awakened." The demon standing in the doorway looked almost fragile. He was tall and willowy, taller even than Kurama's youko form, and everything about him was white. Platinum hair that brushed the floor, skin the color of blank paper, clear, talon-like fingernails that curled slightly toward his palm. His eyes were translucent, jelly-like. Yuusuke found himself averting his gaze quickly, because eyeballs that looked like clear gelatin were really gross.

A female demon stepped into the room behind him, petite and dark-haired, her eyes and lips a greasy black. "Poor Kurama," she crooned. "His will was very strong."

"Uh-huh." Yuusuke looked back and forth between them, one hand still pressed against the invisible wall of his cage. "And who do you think you are?"

"I am the Kingman." The white demon gestured toward the female, talons stroking her cheek. She barely came up to his waist, and had to tip her head back to gaze up at him. "This is my Queen."

"Wow, royalty. If I'd've known I woulda worn clean underwear." Yuusuke planted his hands on his thighs and leaned forward, glaring out the side of his cage. "Cut the shit. What the hell are you doing to me?"

"Such a way with words," the Queen said dryly.

"A refreshing bluntness." Kingman took a few steps into the room. "My Queen's poison often causes memory loss. Tell me, Urameshi-san, do you remember how you came to be here?"

He rubbed his left shoulder absently. "You poisoned me?" _Vines erupting form the dirt beneath his feet, twining around his legs, climbing his torso. He reacted too slowly, couldn't stop the vines from wrapping around his throat and squeezing. _

_Stinging, sharp pain all over his body. Thorns on the vines, stabbing him through his clothes. Pain like fire spread through his veins, and he had enough time to realize he'd been drugged._

Kingman caught Yuusuke's eye and smiled, small and knowing. "You haven't figured it out yet, have you?"

"Course I have." Yuusuke gazed at Kingman from beneath hooded eyes, focusing on all the different ways he'd like to bash this asshole's face in, and pleased when the demon's fingers twitched. _Gotcha_. "Kurama's helping you."

"Very good," Kingman said, gladly confirming Yuusuke's worst fear. "Most men are less willing to accept betrayal, but you almost seemed to expect it."

Yuusuke rolled a smirk over his lips, concentrated on the tension of the barrier before him. "Let's just say I have a pretty good idea how guys like you operate."

"You knew I'd recruit those closest to you."

"No," Yuusuke said. "I knew you'd _try._"

The Queen narrowed her eyes, but Kingman tipped his head to the side. "You cannot see the evidence before you, Urameshi-san?"

"I can see that something is _wrong_ with Kurama. I could hear that bitch talking about how his will 'was strong'. I can put two and two together and at least get a round number, you jackass." Yuusuke couldn't sense youki from any of them, so unless they were very good at shielding, then his cage was somehow blocking youki.

"I hadn't been led to believe you could even count," the Queen said.

"Who have you been talking to?" Yuusuke demanded.

She smiled and licked her lips. Yuusuke made a face at the sight of her black tongue. "We've had words with a few of your friends. The human. The fire demon."

"Yeah?" Yuusuke jerked a thumb at Kurama. "They walking around here like zombies, too?"

The Queen smirked and stepped past Kingman till she stood only inches away from Yuusuke. As short as she was, he had to look down at her. "No. They're dead."

Yuusuke's fist impacted with the barrier with a force he could feel up through his shoulder, and the reiki he'd gathered in his fist cracked against the wall like blue lightning. The Queen drew in a startled breath and flinched away before she could catch herself. When she looked up at him, Yuusuke caught her gaze and leaned forward until they were almost on eye level. "You," he said shortly, biting off each word, "are a bad liar."

Kingman chuckled and the tension broke as easily as that. "He's right, my Queen."

"When I get out of here-"

"You will not," the Queen said flatly. "We are _Weavers_, you child. Our threads can manipulate anything, even the fabric of space itself. The prison I have woven for you exists in a space between worlds."

Yuusuke had to think about that for a moment. "So… I'm in another dimension?" He made a face. "There's nothing else in here with me, is there?"

"The barrier is carefully woven," she said. "Nothing will get in or out."

"But, just to clarify," Yuusuke persisted. "I _am_ in another dimension?"

The Queen gave him an exasperated look. "Yes. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yeah." Yuusuke sat back, let his shoulders rest against the opposite cage wall. "Means you aren't as smart as you think you are. What did you do to Kurama?"

'Recruit' was the word Kingman had used, but where Yuusuke was from 'recruit' usually implied that the guy you recruited wanted to be involved with the recruiter. Judging by the vacant look in Kurama's gold eyes and the unsteadiness of his movements, Yuusuke was willing to bet money the youko was being controlled. That didn't make him a 'recruit,' it made him a prisoner. Yuusuke objected to that. He felt like objecting to it strenuously.

"We have ensured his cooperation," Kingman said calmly. "Threads have been woven into his muscles and bones, have been connected to the nerve centers of his brain. His every movement is an act of will on the part of my Queen."

Yuusuke stared at Kurama. "His will was strong" the Queen had said. Yuusuke knew better – Kurama's will was _still_ strong, and he was willing to bet the bitch had to put some serious effort into controlling him. That was why Kurama's movements were off, why his gaze was so vacant. "So you seamstresses-"

"Weavers," the Queen corrected him in a tight voice.

"Right. So what you're telling me is you guys are like that freaky dude in the _Curse of the Puppet Master_."

He might have imagined it, but Yuusuke was pretty sure he saw a flicker of amusement in Kurama's eyes.

"Hardly." Kingman no longer sounded entertained. "Urameshi-san, perhaps you do not fully-"

"Wait, wait." Yuusuke grinned. "I can totally guess where this is going. I don't fully appreciate the gravity of my situation, right? I should realize that I'm under your control? Perhaps I should even be wondering what your devious plan is? Man, and Genkai says I watch too many movies. At least I'm not borrowing their scripts."

The look on Kingman's face could officially be described as annoyed. "You are an unusual challenge, Urameshi-san. But I enjoy that." He turned to leave the room, his hair a cape that dragged along behind him. "Of course, the notoriety that I will gain for being the one to finally fell 'King Urameshi' will be more than enough compensation for your frustrating behavior."

"Kurama," the Queen said. "Accompany us."

Yuusuke bit his tongue to stop himself from objecting. The bitch would probably just get a kick out of it.

Pounding footsteps echoed down the hall, filling the chamber. Yuusuke looked up as a demon burst into the room. "Kingman! It's the others – they've broken through the gate!"

Kingman tensed and Queen drew in a deep breath.

Yuusuke grinned. "Let me guess. Those two dead guys you were telling me about before aren't quite as dead as you thought."

Queen shot him a venomous glare. "My king-"

"Yes," Kingman said, without turning around. "Send Kurama to deal with them. I doubt they'll give him any trouble."

"Wait-" Yuusuke was on his feet before Kingman finished, both hands pressed against the barrier. "You little _shit_, leave him _alone_-"

"If you are very lucky, Urameshi-san, you will have company in a short while." Kingman paused in the doorway and gave Yuusuke a mocking smirk. "Are you lucky, Urameshi-san?"

The door slammed shot behind them, leaving him in the room alone.

* * *

End _The Captured King  
_To be continued in Part Four: _Hanging_

c&c is always appreciated


	5. Hanging

**Disclaimer: **Yu Yu Hakusho and all related characters, events and places are the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

**Author's Notes:** This chapter contains violence and some swearing. Also, Hiei and Kuwabara are forced to play together which doesn't bode well at all. Much, much love toScheherezhad and Kahn for beta reading. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.

The end is... well, almost in sight. I promise.

* * *

**Variation**  
**Part Four: Hanging**

"The blunders are all there… waiting to be made."  
(Savielly Tartakover)

_

* * *

_

_Wednesday, 10:22 pm _

The demon struck, feet slamming into Kuwabara's chest and knocking him onto his back, his head bouncing against the dirt. His breath was forced out of his lungs with a solid whoosh, and the reiken flickered as his concentration broke.

The demon landed lightly on its feet beside him, straightening smoothly and brushing off its long black coat.

Hiei.

Kuwabara felt a brief surge of relief, followed by a much stronger surge of annoyance. "_Why aren't you dead?_"

Hiei frowned at him. "Why do you smell like a sewer?"

"_Shut up!_" Kuwabara leveled a finger at the fire demon, willfully resisting the urge to take a swing at the arrogant little fuck instead. "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your neck." Hiei sheathed his katana and stood. "I'm afraid it may have become a habit after all this time."

"Who asked you?" Kuwabara snarled irritably. He rested his arms on his knees and glared at Hiei from the ground. Now that the fight was over he really, really wanted a bath. And food. And sleep. Mostly a bath. "I thought you were dead."

"Did you grieve?" Hiei mocked him.

"I threw a fucking _party_. Are you going to tell me what's going on, or did you plan on spending the rest of the evening staring at a bunch of dead guys?"

Hiei nudged a corpse with his foot, and it burst into flame. Kuwabara scrambled to his feet as the bodies scattered across the schoolyard began to burn. In seconds there was nothing left of them, and the grass beneath them was unmarked. "Did you manage to get anything out of them, or will I have to fill you in from the beginning?"

"You know, I'm already beginning to miss thinking you were dead." Kuwabara stood, rolling his shoulder and flexing the fingers of his right hand. "I know some guy named Kingman is behind it all and – _what_?"

Hiei raised an eyebrow and pointed.

Kuwabara glanced down and saw the severed tongue still wrapped around his leg. "It's a long story. I asked you once already, you little bastard. Why aren't you dead? I _felt_ you die."

Hiei froze for just a second, and leveled him with a narrow-eyed gaze. "We're going to Genkai's."

That didn't sound like a bad idea to Kuwabara, but he objected on principle anyway. "Shouldn't we be helping Kurama and Urameshi?"

Hiei was already walking away, but he paused to glance over his shoulder. "We need a plan. And unless you want to attract every demon in a thousand-mile radius, you need to bathe."

"I'm definitely missing you being dead. Just so you know."

* * *

_Wednesday, 11:39 pm _

The warehouse was lit by pale backup lights, the kind left on at night so that thieves (like _Hiei_, Kuwabara thought nastily) could see what they were stealing and didn't have to worry about juggling a flashlight and lockpicks.

This particular warehouse also had the added illumination of a dimensional gate.

The gate was an unremarkable little patch of blue swirly light hovering in the air at about chest height. It was large enough for the six-armed wolfman to have come through, although it must have been a tight fit. Hiei and Kuwabara had tracked it down to an empty building in the middle of downtown, and Genkai was incredibly annoyed with herself for never having known it was here. Not that she said anything, but Kuwabara had plenty of experience at seeing Genkai annoyed about something, and he could recognize the expression at a thousand paces.

"It probably wasn't here until recently," Hiei said, breaking his broody silence for the first time since they'd left the temple.

_Well, that got everyone's attention_, Kuwabara reflected as he and Genkai both snapped their heads around to stare at the fire demon. "Gates don't just form out of nowhere," he said.

"It's not a real gate." Hiei sounded bored. "No wards, no stabilizing spells, no power source. This is a tear in the dimensional barrier, nothing more."

"What? Like _Itsuki_ did?" Kuwabara caught himself before he could summon the reiken, but couldn't help glancing over his shoulder.

Genkai crossed her arms and studied the tear thoughtfully. "This demon you spoke of, the one who called herself the Queen – you think she's powerful enough to have done this?"

"Possibly."

Kuwabara rolled his eyes. "That's very helpful. Thanks."

"She was a Weaver, you said?" Genkai asked, ignoring him.

"That's what they call themselves." Hiei's voice indicated that there were other things they were called. "They manipulate threads of reality. Most of them are little more than glorified illusionists, bending light and sound to their will. Some can manipulate thoughts or emotions, following psychic threads."

"Is that what happened when I thought you were dead?" Kuwabara demanded. "She got inside your _head_?"

"And yours," Genkai said while Hiei pretended he didn't know what Kuwabara was talking about. "Once she knew Hiei was a Jaganshi, she must have realized she could use his connection to you as a weapon."

"We are not connected," Hiei and Kuwabara said and glared at each other.

"It is possible," Hiei said coldly, "that there are some of these Weavers powerful enough to manipulate the dimensional barrier."

A quirked eyebrow was her only reaction. "I take it this isn't a usual trait of the race."

Hiei snorted. "The Spirit World would not tolerate a being with that sort of ability for long."

Genkai crossed her arms and studied the pseudo-gate with a dark look not dissimilar to the one she used whenever someone forgot to take their shoes off before entering the temple or when she caught Urameshi raiding her fridge at three in the morning.

She hadn't been surprised to see them arrive at the temple, although she had made Kuwabara undress and hose off in the yard before she let him inside. She'd already known something was happening, since a horde of demons duking it out with one of her students less than a mile from her temple wasn't the sort of thing Genkai missed. They'd briefed her on the specifics, including their suspicion that Kurama and Yuusuke were already a lost cause, then they'd come hunting for the gate Kuwabara had sensed.

Someone was waiting for them on the far side. Kuwabara couldn't sense any youki – not through a gate, he wasn't even sure that was _possible_ – but there was a sensation like spiders crawling under his skin that usually meant someone with some nasty intentions was ahead of him. Hiei knew it as well, although the fire demon tended to be a little paranoid on the best of days. The grim anticipation Kuwabara could see in his eyes was probably just another indication of mental illness.

Uh-oh, now he was getting the Glare. He prodded his mental shields just to make certain that last thought hadn't leaked out. No. Probably Hiei was just being cranky for the hell of it. Well, he knew how to deal with that.

Kuwabara glared back.

"Stop acting like idiots." Genkai's gravelly voice sounded out of thin air somewhere behind him, and Kuwabara fought the urge to jump six inches into the air like a frightened cat. He lost.

Hiei gave him a disdainful glance, obviously declaring himself the winner. Kuwabara considered flipping him off, but that would mean acknowledging him.

_The two of us are about to launch an invasion of a demonic stronghold, which is in another world and guarded by at least two powerful demons and their minions. All this with no backup and without our usual team._ Kuwabara had the sudden realization that he really did not want Hiei to be the last person he saw before he died. _Maybe one of the bad guys will wander in front of my line of vision._

The gate was surprisingly undefended from this side. Kuwabara had expected at least a couple of minions to be guarding it, especially if the Kingman was using it to send troops through (which he was, there were lingering trails of youki hanging in the air and dripping down the walls), but there was no sign that anyone had remained. Maybe they'd all been caught up in the horde that had come after him earlier.

Or maybe it was a trap.

The bunch that had come after him hadn't been that smart, but Hiei's story indicated there were more powerful demons involved than the pack of animalistic D-class minions who'd come after him. If nothing else, the fact that they'd taken down Kurama was a pretty good sign that someone on the other end of this attack probably had at least a few brain cells to rub together.

_And minions_, he thought darkly. _Let's not forget the minions._

Genkai faced the gate, legs straight, hands clasped behind her back. "I don't suppose either one of you will live through this. At least try to take them out with you." She raised an eyebrow and glared meaningfully at the gateway. "I'm missing my show. Are we done?"

Kuwabara sighed. But then, considering what kind of people he had on his side, the demons and minions were probably not his biggest problem.

Then Genkai kicked him through the gate.

* * *

_Wednesday 11:48 pm_

The gateway was crudely formed at best, Kuwabara decided in the part of his mind that wasn't contemplating his own imminent demise. Obviously not as well-formed as the ones the Reikai used or even the carefully crafted breach Sensui, in all his wacky insanity, had had Itsuki create in order to bring hell to earth.

The first few times he'd ventured into the Makai had been courtesy of the

Reikai, either on Koenma's orders or with his knowledge, and the gates used in those instances had dropped them into the demon world almost instantly. Sensui's portal had been different, had required actual travel across the distance from the point of breach to the barrier and then through the barrier and into the Makai.

This was like falling out a window and into a lightning storm.

This was something else entirely, and as Kuwabara tried to twist himself right-side up he decided he didn't care for it. Energy discharge from the ragged edges of reality crawled across his skin, and all in all it felt a lot like being dragged backwards through an electrified rosebush.

Then he was out and falling for real, because the gate happened to be about four meters off the ground.

A frantic mid-air summersault let him hit the ground with his feet instead of his head, but he overbalanced and ended up on one knee. And four meters wasn't _that_ high, so maybe the gateway had added some velocity or something because that really hurt.

He rubbed his knee and winced while Hiei minced about on a tree somewhere to his left.

"If you think you can stay upright**-**" the fire demon began.

"Oh, bite me."

"I didn't know humans _did_ that," Hiei said.

Kuwabara shot him as nasty look as he could manage and scanned their surroundings. They were on the edge of the demon world equivalent of a swamp (just like a human world swamp, only with man-eating trees and leeches the size of your head), near the foot of a mountain, and the geography made his mind boggle slightly, but whatever. If he concentrated, he could make out several youki signatures deep inside the mountain. Kurama was there, but something was strange about him, almost like… a net? Only not.

And then his concentration shifted slightly, to the youki approaching them.

"We're under attack!" And maybe it was less a manly warning than a startled yelp, but hey, at least he'd sensed them before Hiei.

"I know," Hiei said calmly. He'd already drawn his katana without Kuwabara noticing, and had dropped to the ground at some point. "I was starting to _warn_ you when you invited me to bite you."

"Trust me, Hiei," Kuwabara said through gritted teeth. "That was not an invitation."

The demon that appeared from the edge of the swamp was tall, easily half again as tall as Kuwabara himself. Spindly arms with three elbows hung limply at its sides, while legs that bent backwards moved forward in slow, staggering steps. The demon's head lolled sickeningly on its neck, lips parted and eyes blank.

Hiei made a disgusted sound. "I've faced that one before. She called him Bishop. I'm sure I killed him."

"So what we have here is a zombie demon?" There were probably words to describe just how incredibly horrifying that concept was, but Kuwabara was too busy freaking out to think of them.

Hiei's Jagan flared as he pulled aside the wardings, bright purple light that washed over his face and made him look even more evil than he already did. Kuwabara risked a sideways glance at him, since Bishop seemed to be taking his time. The third eye was wide and a vivid violet, smaller than his real eyes, but rounder. It almost made him look younger, if such a thing was even possible.

"He reeks of enchantments," Hiei said. "There is something wrong with this situation."

"Yeah," Kuwabara said. "The _enchanted dead guy_ would be my guess. Unless you meant the stink; I could go either way."

Bishop finally seemed to notice they were there. Its head still swayed and bobbed with each lurching step, but its eyes had suddenly gained a spark of life and zeroed in on Kuwabara. The demon gurgled, a sick, watery sound that seemed to come straight from its lungs.

Kuwabara snapped his fingers and was rewarded with the warm spark of the reiken. He wrapped his fist around it, feeling the energy cycle back and forth from the sword to his flesh. "Out of curiosity, what can this guy do?"

"I don't know," Hiei said, still regarding the demon with a narrow-eyed glare. "I killed him before he could try anything last time."

"Great."

"If it makes you feel better, he's probably the weakest of our opponents."

"Even better," Kuwabara said dryly. "He came back from the dead and he's the _weakest_ of our opponents."

Hiei snorted dismissively and sheathed his sword long enough to retie the Jagan's wards. "This won't be a problem. You can wait here if you're worried."

Kuwabara sputtered. "_Hey!_ Wait a-"

A flicker of youki was all the warning he had before Hiei moved, and Kuwabara dodged to the side as the demon flew past, moving fast enough to be nothing more than a blur of black and white.

"Okay. Fine." Kuwabara planted one hand on his hip and glared up the hill. "You go ahead and deal with the minor threat. I'll just be over here conserving my strength for the _real_ enemy."

Bishop staggered as Hiei's katana sliced across its chest, its head flopping backwards. Hiei flickered back into sight, weapon clenched in one fist and an odd expression on his face. Kuwabara frowned as Bishop's head straightened and the demon stepped forward again.

_There's no cut_. Hiei's strike hadn't caused any damage. Kuwabara regarded the long-legged demon with a renewed sense of wariness. Hiei may have been a complete asshole, but he knew more about cutting people in half than Kurama did about plants.

Hiei turned to attack again, katana flashing. Bishop held up one arm to block the attack, and the blade struck against a bony forearm with a scraping sound of metal against metal. Hiei jumped back without leaving a mark on his opponent.

Bishop ignored him and continued its slow advance, feet dragging in the dirt. There was something inexorable about the demon's advance, as if it was on a mission.

Kuwabra glanced over his shoulder, realization making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. "He's trying to get through the gate!" He shouted a warning to Hiei, positioning himself before the demon.

Except he really wasn't a demon anymore, just an animated corpse with only the barest trace of what it had been. There was only a trace of youki, slick and stagnant beneath something sweeter that Kuwabara could barely sense, and which must be the enchantments Hiei had mentioned. He focused his sixth sense, scouring the aura around the creature, and it felt strangely… sticky. Like a spiderweb.

"Hiei?"

"What?" Hiei's response was a barely discernable snarl of frustration – undoubtedly he was annoyed that this _weakest opponent_ hadn't had the good grace to give up and die like a good little minion.

"These Weavers – are they like spiders?"

"No."

_Wow_, thought Kuwabara. _If contempt were cash, I'd be rolling in it._ "Their enchantments, short stuff. Do their enchantments feel like spider webs? Sticky? Web-shaped?"

"That is the _stupidest_-" Hiei paused. "A little."

Bishop's advance was taking him directly toward Kuwabara, though his pace was so lethargic that Kuwabara couldn't imagine he'd be able to manage the four-meter leap up to the gate.

He let the demon get a few steps closer, then stabbed forward with the reiken, focusing on the blade and extending it. The spirit sword pierced the demon's shoulder, severing the same lanky arm that had withstood the blade of Hiei's katana.

Oh, he was _so_ going to rub that in if they lived through this.

"Looks like this thing's not impervious to spiritual energy," Kuwabara said smugly.

No blood flowed from the wound, but that probably wasn't surprising, since it was dead and all. Bishop didn't seem upset by the loss of its limb, or even aware of it. The demon just took a few more lurching steps toward him.

Kuwabara dove forward, ducking under Bishop's remaining arm – and when was the last time an opponent was actually taller than him, anyway? Byakko? No, no, Yakumo at least – and drove the reiken up and inward, piercing the demon's chest and exploding out its back. He shoved, dragging the reiken up, slicing through bone and flesh and leaving a gaping, ragged would more than a foot long through the creature's torso. Kuwabara pulled the reiken free and dodged to the side, slicing through the demon's neck.

Bishop's head hit the dirt with a heavy thud. Then the rest of him took another step toward Kuwabara.

"What the-" Kuwabara backpedaled to avoid a blow. "It's supposed to die when I do that!"

"You can't kill it, idiot!" Hiei said from somewhere behind Bishop. "It's already dead."

"Well, if you have a brilliant idea, now would be the time!" Kuwabara snapped back, parrying another blow. Bishop slammed its remaining arm against the reiken, slicing through its own flesh. "This is _sick_."

He felt the surge of Hiei's youki just in time to fling himself backward before Bishop burst into flame. He landed heavily on his back, unharmed except for his dignity because really, _that_ was graceful. "Thanks for the warning, Hiei."

What was left of Bishop jerked and collapsed, Hiei's demon fire destroying the flesh and bone construct. Youki sparked inside the flames, the strands of enchantment breaking as the body they were affixed to was destroyed. The flame burnt itself out in minutes, and not so much as ashes remained of Bishop.

"That," Hiei said, "is my brilliant idea."

"Yeah, yeah. 'Oh, let's set it on _fire_'. That's your answer to everything, isn't it?" Kuwabara pushed himself up off the ground, wiping dirt off his jeans. "It's slightly more creative than 'hit it till it dies,' I'll give you that." He used his sixth sense to prod at the space where Bishop had been, ascertaining for himself that there remained no trace of youki. Bishop was gone totally, and the sticky-sweet feel of the spiderweb was fading.

Slipping away. Kuwabara held out a tentative hand, ignoring the look Hiei was giving him, testing the air where bishop had stood. He could almost feel the strands of the web lingering behind, slipping over his hand as they vanished.

"Threads, huh?" Kuwabara asked. "I still say it feels like spiderwebs."

Hiei frowned. "Semantics."

"Maybe. Webs have… connotations."

"Spiders?" Hiei smirked.

Kuwabara felt the last few strands slip over his hands, clinging gently but not pulling at him – though he had no doubt they _could_ if he had been their focus. The strands slid away, rejoining something else, becoming part of another enchantment. Weaving into another spiderweb.

"Nets," he murmured.

Power flared at the edge of the swamp, cloying and thick. Even warded, Hiei's eyes widened and he turned.

"Nets," Kuwabara said again. "Or webs, or whatever. When I sensed Yuusuke and Kurama earlier, it was like someone had dropped nets of youki over them."

"As with Bishop?" Hiei asked.

"No," Kuwabara said.

Kurama stepped out of the swamp, in full youko form. Silver hair and skin, the nearly transparent silk tunic, and the ethereal golden eyes made him look less like a demon and more like a spirit. He stepped forward with the same deliberate movements that Bishop had, though Kurama did not jerk and falter.

"Worse," Kuwabara added, and he managed to get a kekkai up around them just as Kurama attacked.

end _Hanging_

* * *

To be continued in: _The King's Bishop_


	6. The King's Bishop

**Disclaimer: **Yu Yu Hakusho and all related characters are the property of all kinds of wonderful people, none of whom are me.

**Warnings: **Hiei and Kuwabara are stil being forced to cooperate. Except swearing and violence.

**Author's Note: **"Komori Yu" is the name of the Japanese version of Spider-Man. I borrowed his name for the home of the Weavers.

Much, much love to Scheherezhad andKrysis for beta reading. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.

* * *

_**Variation  
**__**Part Five: The King's Bishop**_

"In blitz, the knight is stronger than the bishop."  
(Vlastimil Hort)

_

* * *

_

_Wednesday afternoon, 11:52 am (human world time)_

Kurama had felt eyes on his back all morning. Being watched was not an unfamiliar experience in the Makai, but this was not the usual eyes and ears of Yomi's court, or the here-then-gone flicker of Hiei dropping by on an errand for Mukuro, but something that raised his hackles and made him stretch his senses to the limit as he walked through every doorway and around every corner.

The sensation dulled somewhat in Yomi's antechamber, where Kurama suspected even Shura's inquisitive eyes dared not wander, but something told him that once he was out of Yomi's presence, it would return.

"I think I'll spend the day in the gardens," Kurama said as he stepped out of the room, half a step behind Yomi, and he felt the silent regard vanish.

The gardens were the one area Kurama considered his. He had claimed the fertile stretch of soil behind Yomi's palace and made it his own years ago when he had first begun to train Shura. Yomi had conceded it pleasantly enough, which meant that there had been overly-polite conversation about Kurama over-stepping his bounds and pointed remarks about neglecting his duties before Yomi had tired of the whole thing and made a gift of the space. Yomi could be predictable at times.

It was a place Kurama could generally count on being undisturbed. Plants in the Makai were not of any interest except as food – except the ones with teeth of their own, which were avoided at all costs – and Kurama's reputation for using them as weapons served to act as a reliable warning to most that they should search for their lunch elsewhere. Yomi himself could not be bothered to enter the gardens except on those occasions when he thought it would best serve to annoy Kurama.

Yomi's son was another story, a welcome visitor often wandering beneath the shade of maplewood and sakura trees as alien to the Makai as the _janeju_ and firethorn vines were to the Ningenkai. Shura took after his father in that way – Yomi had the same appreciation for the exotic and unique, though he disguised it better and was not nearly so innocent in his regard.

Kurama hummed to himself as he walked through the gardens, pausing to examine the leaves of a rosebush. The song was one he'd heard only once, and that several hundred years ago when Kuronue had been _spectacularly_ drunk, though the melody had stayed with him. It wasn't particularly catchy; Makai songs rarely were, and he could not remember the words. He was almost certain it was a drinking song of some kind, though. The tune was right. Besides, Kurama doubted Kuronue had known any other type of song.

The emptiness of the gardens made it easy for him to hear the rustle of bodies moving through the leaves, the pad of bare feet on the grass. Sweat and unfamiliar body odor stood out distinctly against the crisp smell of broken stems and crushed flowers. Kurama's human form was not as sensitive as his youko body, but if he concentrated he could still hear the soft rasp of breathing – heavy, heavy, soft – coming from three different sets of lungs.

Oh dear. He seemed to be surrounded. He hummed the end of the song with a flourish and made a mental note to see if Yuusuke had heard the words as he leaned over slightly, inspecting the tiny buds on the rosebush with an attention the perfectly healthy plant did not warrant.

From behind his left shoulder, several meters back, he heard the rustle of clothing and the whisper-soft movement of something – an arm or weapon – moving through the air as one of his stalkers made their first move.

He heard something cut through the air as he dodged, weight on his hands as he tucked his head down and pushed himself forward and up, flipping mid-air to face his attacker. He reached instinctively, following the sound more than the sight, and picked a clear glass dart out of the air less than a foot from his chest. He eyed it quickly, noting the clear liquid it contained within, permeated with the hint of youki and closed his fingers around it carefully before lifting his eyes to scan the trees surrounding him, making a show of looking for his attacker.

"Nice catch." The voice was feminine, congratulatory, as was the demon who stepped out from behind the concealing foliage of the lilac bush several yards away. "But I expected no less of Koenma's most competent servant."

Kurama dropped the dart into the dirt and commanded the grass roots to reach up and drag it beneath the soil. "Weaver," he acknowledged, pitching his voice on the high end, friendly and inquisitive. "You're a long way from the Komori Forest."

"Reikai dog," she said in kind, "you are a long way from your master's heels."

Kurama smiled, refusing to be provoked. It wouldn't be the first time he was accused of dancing to Koenma's tune, nor would it be the last. He did find himself wishing that occasionally someone would find something a little more relevant to insult him with. He'd robbed half the Makai in his day, but no one seemed to remember that. "What business is it of yours whose heels I sit at?" he asked, spreading his hands slightly in a shrug. "The Weaver kin don't bother themselves with the alliances of one demon." That was perhaps an overstatement, as the Weavers could not be bothered with much of anything outside their forest and the surrounding valleys and hills, but he felt he could be forgiven a mild exaggeration or two under the circumstances.

"The Weavers concern themselves with nothing but games of no great importance." The Weaver's voice dipped low and she took an aggressive step toward him. The silver bells threaded into her hair reflected the dim Makai light as she moved, chiming softly. "That is why they rule over nothing but a dreary forest."

Kurama felt his hackles rise, felt his youki stir uneasily. It was never promising when your opponent spoke of ruling or games.

"If you're interested in discussing politics," Kurama said easily, concentrating on the youki saturating the soil and plants around him, making himself ready, "perhaps I could arrange a meeting with King Yomi?"

The Weaver exhaled in a silent laugh and tipped her head, ink-black eyes regarding him through her lashes. "The false kings of the Makai have nothing to say that I want to hear. For now, you will do. You will come with us, Kurama."

"I'm afraid I have plans for this evening," Kurama said, turning to the side as if he planned to break away. He could hear shuffling in the trees from the two remaining watchers. "Perhaps if you left your card, I could get back to you when my calendar was clear?"

The concept of calling cards and appointment calendars was alien to her, and the tightening of her features made it clear she thought he was mocking her. Which, in all fairness, Kurama could admit he was. "You will come with us," the Weaver said again. She lifted one hand and Kurama deliberately took a defensive stance.

The remaining two watchers – the two heavy breathers – emerged from the forest with far less poise and delicacy than the Weaver had managed. One stomped like he was killing ants, heavy booted feet trampling across the grass and Kurama held his tongue as several small plants were crushed. The other was so busy keeping both eyes on Kurama that he nearly walked into a tree.

_Good help_, Kurama thought the human saying ruefully, but did not voice the sympathy. He was quite certain the Weaver was not here to exchange stories about the difficulties of leading a band of outlaws.

"You will come with us," the Weaver said for the third time.

Kurama risked turning his back to the Weaver, letting her think he was more wary of her helpers. "How could I turn down such a lovely invitation?" he asked. He edged backwards slightly, raising a hand to the side of his throat and palming the seed for the rose whip.

_What do I know of Weavers_? Kurama had never been to Komori Forest, and if he'd encountered a Weaver in the past, it had not left a lasting impression. He knew the stories, that they were conjurers and illusionists, capable of manipulating light and sound to create a false reality. _So is any of this real?_

Her two helpers certainly smelled real. Kurama was not receiving any conflicting input, either. His eyes were telling him the same things as his ears.

He heard the Weaver move behind him, the bells in her hair betraying her. He paused a heartbeat, then dodged again, letting the dart fly past him this time.

"My poison paralyzes the limbs and causes minor memory loss." The Weaver's voice was steady. If his hasty dodge had annoyed her, it did not show in her voice. "But it wears away eventually, leaving no permanent harm. Each additional dose makes the side effects longer and more painful. Eventually, the damage is permanent. For your human body, I'd say four doses would be enough to kill you."

"You've yet to hit me even once," Kurama pointed out, holding up his left hand, index finger pointing up. "Perhaps you're getting ahead of yourself?"

"You are outnumbered." Her bare foot padded softly against the soil as she took a deliberate step toward him. "You are surrounded." Another step. "And no one is likely to venture into these gardens until you are long past need of rescue. Do you need additional convincing, Kurama?"

They were all very good points, really. If not for the fact that these were his gardens, his plants, and he could at any moment bring the entire place alive beneath their feet with a mere thought. If she'd known half as much about his abilities as she seemed to think she did, she would never have followed him in here, let alone attempted to attack him.

He wondered what had brought a Weaver out of her forest, what had led her to enlist the aid of regular youkai, what had provoked her argument with him. He wondered what she had meant by her earlier statement about ruling.

He could stay here and bait her all day and learn nothing more than he already had, or he could play along, let her think she had the upper hand until he could determine what was really going on.

"I think you assume a great deal." He held himself still, ignoring her nearly-silent steps in favor of eyeing her minions suspiciously.

"I don't think I do." The Weaver fairly purred from only a few meters away.

Kurama let his eyes go wide and he straightened, turning to face her.

She bared her teeth in a lazy, gloating smile of victory and tossed a third glass dart to him.

Kurama caught it carefully. It was light, nearly weightless in his hand. He rolled the dart between his fingers and let himself smile grimly. "Tell me one thing," he said suddenly, putting just enough anger in his voice to guarantee they would listen. "Are you attempting to target Yomi? I'll tell you honestly: he doesn't care for me particularly. If you mean to take me hostage, he won't be swayed." Amused would far better fit Yomi's state of mind if such a situation were to occur.

The Weaver waved his words away like smoke. "Yomi is not our current concern."

Implying then that he would be a target in the future. Kurama wondered if the Weaver had deliberately given him that much information, or if she hadn't realized what she gave away.

"You don't expect me to poison myself?" Kurama gestured toward her with the dart.

"I do." The Weaver waved her hand again, dismissive. She'd bought his act and written him off as defeated. "Shall I repeat myself? No one is coming to your aid, youko. Administer the drug yourself, or I will." Her eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth slightly. "And I will use considerably more than one dose."

Overconfidence was such an unattractive trait in an opponent.

Kurama sent a spark of youki to one of the seeds he carried, hidden in his hair. The bloodflower was a beautiful flowering plant, whose blood-red blossoms were the only indication of its parasitic nature. He carefully controlled the growth of the plant, encouraging only the thin, hollow roots to grow. He sent one burrowing into the skin of his shoulder blade, where his hair would obscure any marks that may be left, and down the length of his left arm.

He nodded once to the Weaver, to show his compliance, and pierced the skin of his forearm with the glass dart.

His system absorbed some of the poison through contact; he could feel it burn, his human body offering little resistance. Most of it he emptied into the hollow root.

He tossed the empty dart at the Weaver's feet as he carefully healed the puncture wound in the root and ordered it to withdraw. It ached slightly as it slithered back up his arm, and he fought back a shiver as it extracted itself from his skin. It was full of the Weaver's poison; he couldn't reverse its growth and return it to the seed, as he did most of his plants. He held it in place at the base of his neck, letting it hold onto his hair until he could dispose of it without being seen.

The small amount of poison he had absorbed seeped through his blood already. The full dose would have devastated his human body and briefly, he wished he had thought to be in youko form before confronting them. But that might have made them cautious, and even his demon form might not have been able to combat a full dose. The Weaver's youki burned inside of him and it was enough to make his stomach turn. He was losing sensation in his outer extremities already.

Kurama let his knees buckle beneath him and he stumbled.

"Watch him," the Weaver ordered, her voice sharp. Kurama noted the sharpness. Perhaps she was not as certain of the poison's effectiveness as she pretended?

The two minions stomped over to his side. He ignored them as much as possible and focused inward, tracing the path and effect of the poison.

Kurama felt something slide through his skin, following the trail of the Weaver's poison into his blood, through his muscles, slithering around his bones and joints. It burned down the back of his throat and spread through his stomach and creeping tendrils pressed against his lungs and pulled at his breath.

_Puppeteers, _Kurama thought, a flicker of memory coming to light. Rumors that every so often a Weaver came about who could do more than create illusions.

The Weaver cupped his chin in her hand, her ink-black fingernails leaving marks in the soft skin of his throat. "Stand up, my little pawn."

Something slick and sweet bloomed on the back of Kurama's tongue as his legs started to move without his direction. Kurama's fingers dug into the earth beneath him and pushed; his legs drew up beneath him. He rose slowly, unsteadily. The Weaver pressed a hand against his chest.

"You're going to help us set a trap," she said.

Unnoticed by anyone, the bloodflower fell to the ground.

* * *

_Wednesday afternoon, 11:59 pm (human world time)_

As a thirteen-year-old wannabe street tough, Kuwabara had always believed that strength equaled power equaled fear and/or respect. He'd been strong, and as far as he'd known at the time, that meant he'd been powerful. For good measure he'd imagined a little bit of danger in there too, not like being a bad guy, but just enough that maybe the girls would think he was hot.

Vaguely Condor Joe but without the attitude problem. Or the ninja thing.

Anyway, it was a moot point because he'd never made it to the dangerous bad boy level of gangster hood. All the things you had to do to be dangerous generally involved being an asshole, and Kuwabara was the kind of guy who actually paid for his own porn and the only things he ever stole (besides one incident with a really _sweet_ red convertible, but Urameshi was the one who'd done most of the stealing, Kuwabara had just been along for the ride, and anyway they'd brought it back with a full tank of gas) were his sister's cigarettes and Urameshi's beer. He couldn't help but feel that didn't really count. He was strong, but he wasn't dangerous.

Kurama was dangerous. Not very strong, not in human form anyway. Physical strength was the one area where Kuwabara had Kurama beat. For whatever good that did him when you realized Kurama knew about seventy thousand forms of martial arts and Kuwabara's style of fighting generally involved such complex techniques as "hitting shit", "stabbing shit" and occasionally the flashy tactic of "kicking shit in the head."

Of course, he'd learned to fight from repeated encounters with Urameshi, whose own tactics were more like "hitting shit" and the highly effective "hitting shit harder."

But Kurama had lived more than a thousand years in the Demon World, a place where a smart, careful demon would be eaten alive in ten seconds flat. He'd _run_ a small chunk of it, apparently, as some kind of demonic criminal underlord or something; Kuwabara was vague on details. Decades after Kurama had fled to the human world, demons still recognized his name and face and reacted in fear.

Kuwabara was pretty fucking screwed, that was for sure.

In the half second between seeing Kurama and the attack, Kuwabara came up with about seven different ways he was going to die horribly and that wasn't counting the possibility that Hiei would throw him at Kurama as a sacrificial distraction.

"Oh, we are so screwed," he said. Hiei didn't hurry to disagree with him, which was a first.

Kurama stepped out of the edge of the swamp and leapt, six and a half feet of silver hair and lean muscle hurtling through the air straight for them.

The youko struck Kuwabara's hastily erected kekkai, orange light flashing briefly against his skin as the spiritual energy repelled him, then fell back, landing delicately on the balls of his feet. His tail swished briefly but his expression never wavered. This close, Kuwabara could feel the web of youki and enchantments wrapped around the youko's body. If he inhaled he could taste the cotton-candy stickiness that had ensnared Bishop; he could see the individual strands that criss-crossed Kurama's body like bright black tattoos against his skin and around his hair. They went inside, too, vanishing under the skin in places. Several thin threads hung from the youko's lips and dangled from beneath his fingernails.

"Screwed," Kuwabara said again. He flipped the spirit sword between his fingers, cracking his knuckles nervously as he did. Hiei was still and silent at his side and Kuwabara risked a sideways glance, unhappily willing to let the fire demon take the lead. If nothing else he could probably learn something from watching Hiei get slaughtered. A thought struck him and he narrowed his eyes. "Don't set Kurama on fire."

Hiei sounded exasperated. "_He_ isn't who you need to be worrying about."

"Can you take him down?" If Hiei said yes, Kuwabara would laugh in his face.

"Only as a last resort." The Jagan flared beneath its wards, briefly, and Kuwabara thought of Kurama's brains liquefying and dripping out his ears.

"Yeah," Kuwabara said. "Let's not try that." He concentrated on the pulse of reiki in his blood and the force of the kekkai surrounding them. Kurama stood only a few feet away, leaning forward into the invisible barrier and Kuwabara could feel every ounce of force the youko was exerting. Something about that was off, something was missing, but Kuwabara couldn't figure out _what_. "We need a plan," he said.

"Drop the kekkai," Hiei ordered.

And okay, yeah, it was juvenile, but when Hiei started snapping orders Kuwabara's first instinct was mainly to be contrary. "No. Why?"

"We can't stand here and stare at each other all night."

Kuwabara frowned. Kurama was pressed against the barrier, but it was no more pressure than you'd get if someone was leaning against a glass door. He could keep the kekkai up for at least a few hours at this rate, assuming nothing else came along that distracted his attention or diverted his reikai away from maintaining it. A stalemate.

No, worse. Because they'd be stuck behind the barrier, waiting for Kurama to magically come to his senses while Kingman's forces were free to give Kurama backup. The kekkai wouldn't hold against a determined attack, and if they came from more than one side, his concentration would be diverted.

Little shrimp had a point. Damnit.

Hiei apparently was following his train of thought – and wasn't that a scary thought? "So we hit him fast, take him down."

"You said yourself you were afraid to fight Kurama," Kuwabara pointed out. "And he's only gotten better since then. All of a sudden you think he's a pushover?"

"I'm not fighting Kurama," Hiei said. "I'm fighting the Queen. Kurama stopped calling the shots." He drew his katana; his arm moved so quickly that it blurred slightly. "So drop the kekkai before I go through it."

"No, stop – _look_!" Kuwabara snapped his fingers irritably. "We can't stop him this way, not as long as she's controlling him. She's got her threads into him. If we tie him up, she'll just make him fight anyway, maybe hurt him breaking free, and eventually we'll end up killing him by accident just trying to restrain him. We need to break her control."

Hiei snarled, which could pass for agreement if Kuwabara didn't look too closely at the expression on his face. "What do you suggest then?"

"Look, he's not using his youki, right?" That was what was missing. It wasn't that there was a lack of plants for Kurama to play with – the swamp just a few meters away would have kept him supplied against a hundred opponents, let alone the two of them. If Kurama had been using his powers against them, they'd have been dragged underground by overgrown roots and left to smother in the dirt by now, kekkai or no. "So one of us should be able to hold our own against him for a little while." Hiei was faster than Kurama, Kuwabara stronger. Alone, one of them could probably hold out for a reasonable amount of time. "I'll stay here, you go find Urameshi."

"You think you can take Kurama on yourself."

Kuwabara made a mental note to take serious offense at the tone in Hiei's voice later, when they weren't about to die horribly. "I think you're faster than I am and that you can go in, get Urameshi, and get out again in the time it takes me to sneeze." He grit his teeth. "But hey, if you think _I'd_ be better able to defeat the Kingman and his minions than _you_, then by all fucking _means_-"

The fire demon glanced over his shoulder toward them mountain, a curiously blank expression on his face. "If you die, Kurama's going to be emotional."

Kuwabara grinned. "Then you better hurry." He didn't give any warning; he just let the kekkai fall.

Hiei vanished from sight, his movements so fast that Kuwabara couldn't follow them visually without concentrating. He could feel Hiei's youki for a minute like a receding flame at his back.

Kurama surged forward impossibly fast, moving from stationary to attack mode almost faster than Kuwabara could process. Not as fast as Hiei or Urameshi – Superman had nothing on those two; faster than a speeding bullet _nothing_ – but faster than Kuwabara could move. Fast enough.

He had time to dodge only because he'd been expecting Kurama to rush him. He ducked low, avoiding the blow Kurama was aiming at his face, braced his hands against the ground and swung his leg out, knocking Kurama's feet out from under him.

The youko fell, his legs cutting a swath in the sand as he slid down. _Fell_. Kurama put ballerinas and martial artists to shame. He'd taught Kuwabara that move and how to counter it.

_That answers that_, Kuwabara thought with grim satisfaction, pushing himself up onto his feet and ignoring the sand that clung to his palm. _I'm not fighting Kurama. I'm fighting the Queen._ His chances of living through the next hour or two were looking better every minute.

A few feet away, Kurama rose from the sand, the skin on his left leg scraped red and beaded with blood.

Kuwabara backed off a few steps, letting the youko pace him step for step until they were nearly moving in synch. "So is this the part where I say '_Oh, Kurama, I know you're in there somewhere'_ and you clutch your head and stagger around until you break her control by sheer force of will and I swoon or something?" He considered that. "I'm not swooning, I don't care what the movies say." He stepped sideways instead of backwards and Kurama almost stumbled before mimicking him. "So can your black widow monster woman hear us?" He waggled his eyebrows. "Or is she too busy biting Kingman's head off?"

Kurama swung at him, his full weight behind the blow. Kuwabara grabbed him by the wrist and used the youko's forward momentum to throw him forward, sending the youko crashing to the ground. "Or – hey, she's not biting Urameshi's head off, is she? Because Keiko'd never stand for it."

Provoking Kurama was almost as much fun as provoking Hiei, but a lot harder. Kuwabara had made something of an art form of it over the years. This was too easy to be any fun, though. Kurama never would have let a stupid joke like that taunt him into a reaction.

"You know," Kuwabara said, huffing irritably and planting on hand on his hip, "other guys get to rescue hot red-headed _girls_ and wake them with a kiss. I get Kurama the Wonder Puppet trying to disembowel me. There's no justice."

Kurama heard that one. The youko's next attack was a bit more emphatic and a bit less clumsy. Kurama actually growled as he surged to his feet and dove at Kuwabara, getting his arms around the human's waist and knocking them both into the dirt. Kuwabara winced mentally before he swung, cracking Kurama across the jaw with a right hook that made the youko's head snap back.

With a little effort Kuwabara managed to shove Kurama off him. He rolled with him and grabbed Kurama's wrists, holding them against the youko's chest. "All right, all right, stop _helping_ her, Kurama. I promise not to compare you to any more fairy-tale princesses, all right?" He grimaced as Kurama tried to pull free and tightened his grip. It would be too easy to hurt Kurama by accident this way. "I don't suppose you want to sit quietly and wait for the others to get back, huh?"

Kurama bucked underneath him and Kuwabara barely managed to twist in time to block Kurama's knee with his hip – "Fighting like a _girl_!" – and Kurama took advantage of his distraction to wrench one hand free and dig his claws into Kuwabara's upper arm.

It was a minor wound, but it still hurt and Kuwabara hissed through his teeth as Kurama raked his hand down the length of his arm, shredding the sleeve of his jacket and gouging the skin beneath.

"Not the clothes!" Kuwabara grabbed at Kurama's wrist, grimacing slightly at the blood smearing across his fingers. "I've already lost an entire outfit because of you people and a brand new pair of sneakers, and now I have to replace my favorite coat, too?"

Kurama snarled and lunged upward, pushing against the hand Kuwabara still held pressed against his chest.

Kuwabara jerked backwards just as Kurama's teeth snapped shut half an inch from his face, nearly tearing a chunk of skin from his cheek. It was as much surprise as anything that made him lose his grip, cannibalism having been very low on the list of things Kuwabara was expecting next.

And okay, yeah, just a bite, but _damn,_ Kurama's youko form had some sharp teeth.

He rolled away from the youko and pushed himself up with his injured arm, wincing slightly, but the muscles were already healing, the skin slowly knitting itself back together. In a few minutes the jacket would be the only casualty.

"Lady," Kuwabara said, wagging a finger at her, "you are seriously tempting my policy against beating up girls."

Kurama paused a few feet away and pointed at something behind Kuwabara's back.

One eye kept warily on Kurama, expecting a trick of some kind, Kuwabara risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Hiei stood on a low hill a few dozen meters away, watching them fight. Kuwabara drew in a breath to call out to him, ask if he was waiting for an invitation or _what_, when he saw the hair-like black threads running through Hiei's skin and eyes.

Kuwabara threw a hand up in the air, the tattered sleeve of his jacket almost sliding all the way down to his shoulder. "The plan was not hard! Go in, don't get caught by the evil spider-monsters, get Urameshi, get out! Four steps, Hiei! What part was it exactly that _confused_ you?" He resisted the urge to flip Hiei off and settled for yelling, "You little _midget_!" as loudly as he could.

Okay. Bad, meet worse.

Hiei's head was tilted to the side, his eyes half-closed. One leg lifted and jerked forward; his whole body spasmed slightly, his arms flopping at his sides.

Then he straightened and vanished, moving too fast to see, too fast for Kuwabara to avoid.

* * *

To be continued in _Counterplay_

c&c always appreciated


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